


And Now I'm Sunk

by Gennebra



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Little Mermaid Elements, and all the half fish and human relationship shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gennebra/pseuds/Gennebra
Summary: The girl halts in the process of sinking back into the hole Clarke had so painstakingly made, desperate to save someone that clearly didn’t need saving.“What are you?” Clarke asks. She thinks she knows the answer but she needs to hear it.The girl opens her mouth, closes it opens it again and says something but its too low for Clarke to hear. Finally, in her third try, she manages to say, voice barely above a whisper. “I’m a mermaid.”
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	And Now I'm Sunk

**Author's Note:**

> I dreamt A LOT today and this was on my head when I woke up to write what I dreamed of.
> 
> The title comes from Florence + The Machine song Swimming, that I found as I was searching for a title for this and it's lyrics are weirdly fitting with the themes I will work with here.

Clarke skids and skates through the ice, almost falling flat on her face. It’s worth it though for at least for now she feels free, freer than she has felt in a long time.

The river seems to go on and on and she decides to follow it to its end. Her shoes are in no way adequate for the task shes undertaking but she persists and every fall makes her less willing to go back to her home knowing that her skinned knees and bruised hands will earn her an earful. 

She spots a group of hares, brown and as tall as her knees. Octavia Blake has a pet hare, one that she brings to school and it makes all the other children surround her vying for Octavias attention so they can pet it, while the girl herself treats them as her little kingdom and order them to do favours for her imperiously.

Octavia’s hare looks nothing like these ones however, Marigold is white and fluffy all lilac eyes and wiggly pink nose, not a fur out of place due to Octavia’s constant brushing of it. The hares at the river look proper wild, brown fur mated and as Clarke kneels and stealthy approaches she can see that some of them have scars and one is missing part of its paw. She wonders what would be the reaction of the other children if Clarke were to show up with one of them if they fawn over her too. She imagines it all; being in the centre while Octavia scowls, having the children tell her how nice she looks and asking to pet the hare, what she would name it.

She dismisses the daydream quickly. Her mom would sooner cook the hare than keep it and the other children would still be too scared of approaching her. Clarke can play with them a bit, however. 

She leaps from her observing spots behind a few tall brushes that are part of the vegetation of the little island in the middle of the river and starts chasing the rodents. The lightest-coloured one, the one with the missing piece of the paw and mean eyes is fast and agile and appears to bound back to goad Clarke into chasing it while her brethren disperse in all directions. She rushes through the ice, trying to catch it and although one time her arms close around it, to her surprise, the hare wiggles its soft body and manages to get away. 

She spends a long time like that giving chase then being chased and laughing so hard she gets out of breath. She’s chasing it again after a brief pause when it happens; she falls again but this time is a serious one. Her nose stings were it hit the hard ice and the brooch shes wearing to keep her cape closed falls off.

Immediately visceral, heavy and clogging panic seizes her; the brooch is a family heirloom, passed down through countless Griffins until it had fallen into Clarke’s hands. She had to swear not to lose it, do more chores than ever before and beg for a year until her mother relented and let her have it. She desperately searches for it, shoving snow out of the way only to go through the piles she just made looking for it but its made of delicate silver filigrees, and the colour blends in easily with the white, white snow.

Shes shoving more snow away, chasing a glow that might be it when her already unsettled heart almost leaps out of her body; the snow shed just shoved off clears out to reveal a face, a girls face. Clarke almost falls on her behind but after a brief second of shock, she starts looking for something to break the rivers frozen surface with. The girl might not be dead, its Clarkes only thought, she might have just fallen into the river from somewhere nearby and is struggling to survive which means that there’s no time to rush back to the village and get help. 

There’s a rock nearby and Clarke starts slamming it as hard as she can, red droplets on the running down her hand and falling into the frozen water although she feels no pain. Finally, after what felt like an eternity but couldn't have been more than a few minutes she breaches the surface. She lets go of the rock and starts slamming her foot onto the small hole she’d made, hoping not to fall in herself. Luckily the ice is not so hard that she has to struggle for too much longer, the surface of the river frozen over quite recently, which is great because she already feels drained. 

There’s no time to rest though, she reaches in, the cold water seeming to be burning her bleeding hands, grabs the girls arm and  _ pulls _ . She’s slightly bigger than Clarke and its a struggle to pull her torso out and her weight almost drags them both down a couple of times. Finally, after much struggle Clarke manages to pull most of her out.

At first, she thinks a fish must have bitten the girl and it’s attached to her. When that doesn’t make sense Clarkes mind runs through a couple of hundred possible scenarios as it tries and fails to make sense of what she’s seeing. Where the girl’s legs should be there’s a colourful tail, made of black scales that shimmer in all the colours of the rainbow when the sun shines upon them.

Clarke stares at it and thinks that maybe she did fall through the ice and died. The thought jolts her back into action. Weird fish or not she might be in need of Clarke’s help.

The girl has a pulse, Clarke notes feeling weirdly detached, slow but steady. She remembers that as she was underwater she might need to pour out water from her lungs but shes also breathing perfectly steady, deep breaths as if she were asleep. Feeling out of the water, Clarke can only stare. 

She sits back on her haunches and stays there, staring but unseeing feeling like she’s floating around like one of the ballons shed once seeing. 

Clarke doesn’t know how much time she passes like that, only that when the girl starts to stir she cant feels her limbs and when she tries to speak her mouth doesn’t cooperate, her lips feeling numb. She crawls closer to the girl whos blinking slowly and calmly looking around until she spots Clarke. 

Her green eyes widen comically and Clarke knows what she’s about to do before she does it. “Wait.” She forces through frozen lips.

The girl halts in the process of sinking back into the hole Clarke had so painstakingly made, desperate to save someone that clearly didn’t need saving. 

“What are you?” Clarke asks. She thinks she knows the answer but she needs to hear it.

The girl opens her mouth, closes it opens it again and says something but its too low for Clarke to hear. Finally, in her third try, she manages to say, voice barely above a whisper. “I’m a mermaid.”

It is exactly what Clarke expected to hear but still, the shift in her reality and her tiredness are too much for her to handle and Clarke feels herself falling even as the world turns black around her.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like a should tell you a couple of things. This will be the first chaptered work I have ever posted without finishing it first and I have no idea how to make a writing schedule so there's that.
> 
> I wrote this as I should be writing my thesis, one that I need to have down by December if I wanna, you know, graduate. So I'm kind of too busy to be writing the final of this anytime soon. Apparently writing my thesis has inspired me to write a lot of things except for it.
> 
> Lastly, if you're here looking for any kind of deep!lore or something you will probably be disappointed idk. This fic is not set in a concrete time or universe. If you want to imagine it being set in a steampunk universe go for it, if you want it in our reality but in the 1920s that also works. You can even imagine its set in a frozen little village somewhere that has little access to technology. If that changes I will let you know.
> 
> No thoughts, head empty, only mermaids.
> 
> Ah yes, this was written and reviewed by me, myself and Grammarly gratis so expect some grammar mistakes.


End file.
